


The Outcome Isn't Set

by spirogyra



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, fade to black implied sex, spoilers to 76
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8711191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spirogyra/pseuds/spirogyra
Summary: Pre-Thordak, there's no more time for talking because that's just avoiding the truth.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen several stories with Percy as a virgin and Vex as sexually experienced. At first I considered the idea of the both of them being virgins for a change, but a single off-hand joke altered my approach (Percy's one time). And I really thought Vex's experiences, mostly because of her father, might have set a bad example for her on just what comes of sex.

He's in front of the fire, a book in his hand, but he's not reading it. His eyes just stare at the words on the page without seeing them. There is nothing in this world that can settle him at this point in time.

"Percy?"

He looks up and over his shoulder, but says nothing. The slowly dying fire casts dancing shadows over Vex's face, disguises the hesitation in her eyes, but not in her posture or her voice. "Yes, Vex?" He smiles, wry humor suddenly overtaking him. "Lady Vex'ahlia."

"Don't call me that, as much as I appreciate it still. Always." She steps closer, more fully into the light. The nerves she is displaying are unmistakable now. "Percy darling…."

Absently, Percy sets the book aside, then turns, while remaining seated, to more fully face her. "Is there something wrong?"

She laughs, but it's without humor, and she doesn't sit. "What isn't wrong?" Shifting her weight from foot to foot in a very un-Vex'ahlia way, she pauses, takes a deep breath to speak more, but swallows the words.

Now Percy stands, concerned, and steps in front of her. He takes hold of one of her hands and feels the gentle tremor in it. "Please, tell me what's wrong."

Without saying anything, her hand grips his, and her free hand settles on his chest, her fingertips tracing the top edge of his waistcoat. That is what her eyes focus on for a long moment before she looks up. Their eyes meet. "Come to bed tonight. With me."

He is breathless, as surely as if he were punched in solar plexus. "Vex," he says, but it's more of a gasp.

"If you don't want to, you don't have to. I just thought we're very close to something that might… kill any one of us, or all of us, and I…." Looking back at his chest where her fingers are still stroking his waistcoat, she wets her lower lip with her tongue. "Do you want me to say it?"

"I don't want you to say or do anything you don't want to," Percy answers, his voice low and rough, his mouth dry. "I never want you to-"

"I love you, Percival." Vex looks up. "I love you, and I'm not sure if I care right now if you feel the same for me. I mean, I care, but I can't change how I feel at this point. Come to bed before we lose more time."

Percy nods. "I will." He swallows with great difficulty, and says in barely whisper, "I do. You know I do; I have for ages."

One step back, still holding his hand, and Vex turns to the door. Every few steps she glances back, his hand in her own not evidence enough that he's still there, until they reach her room. "You don't mind here, do you?"

"Of course not." Reaching across her body, Percy opens the door. "Whatever you wish."

Her lips quirk up, and at any other time she might have something clever to say, but here she remains quiet as she leads him into her room. He steps past her, around her so she can shut the door; the latch clicks quietly. "I have to tell you something, darling."

The only light in the room is the moonlight through the window, and once agains the extent of her nerves are disguised.

The sudden shiver that Percy feels just through the clasp of their hands is not from the temperature he figures. "All right then." There's little she could tell him that would change anything here, anything between them after all they've been through.

Vex looks away, out the window, and says, "I've never…."

"Oh." Percy blinks, unsure of what to think or say because it changes nothing. "I," he begins, and it's as tentative as her statement, "have."

"Ah." Her hand begins to pull away.

"Just once."

~~~

_ Julius ruffles his hair, and Percy throws him an annoyed look. "You're 16. There's nothing wrong with it. You don't need to be nervous." _

_ "I'm not nervous. I don't want to do this." _

_ They were approaching an indistinct building, turning down a narrow alley, and stopping at a plain wooden door. Julius knocked three times. _

_ "This is silly." _

_ "This is  _ discrete _." _

_ The door opens, and Percy recoils from the opening. _

_ "Go on. I'll wait for you." _

_ So Julius waited. _

_ The door opens and Percy comes out looking… Distressed would be a mild way to put it. _

_ Julius says nothing, just puts his arm around Percy's shoulders, and starts the walk back to the castle. _

_ "Hungry?" he asks quietly as they near the front gates. _

_ Just a shake of the head. _

_ "Ah. Yeah, just one thing-" _

_ "I don't want to talk about it!" Percy snaps, and walks quickly away, finally breaking into a run until he passes out of sight. _

_ That night, Julius drops off a tray of tea just as Percy's settling into bed. "Drink this. All of it. Just in case." _

_ Percy stares at him, a look of betrayal on his face. _

_ "Just drink it, OK? You get used to it." He waits, and finally Percy turns away, but doesn't touch the tea. "I'm sorry," Julius says quietly before he leaves the room. _

_ A week's worth of foul tasting tea and sad looks from Julius, and Percy never quite forgives his brother. _

~~~

"But it wasn't…." He never spoke of it, still doesn't want to, but his cheeks heat up with undiminished embarrassment. "My brother took me. To the place," he adds, and says nothing more.

Vex nods. "At least you weren't fucking random peasant girls."

~~~

_ She cries on her brother's shoulder, silently. _

_ Their mother is dead; their father doesn't want them. He's not their father. He's just a random elf who forced his way into their lives, into their mother's life. _

_ Then it's a group of men, and they look at her in a way that makes her feel physically unclean. Later, with the bear cub in her arms, Vex sits in the shallow water of the nearest river and scrubs herself. Her face is screwed up in a look of disgust so strong that the tears can't fall. _

_ Trinket's older, larger now, and keeps the worst of humanity away from her. _

_ "Look," Vax says, distracting her from where she's scratching behind Trinket's ears, "you just go in and distract him. I'll do the rest." _

_ "Distract him how? He'll just hide in the back the moment Trinket tries to get through the door." _

_ "I don't know. Just haggle with him for a little bit, throw him a wink, call him darling or something and get him flustered." _

_ Vex's blood goes cold, and she answers sharply. "I am  _ not _ doing that. I would rather be cold and hungry than sell myself for shiny baubles." _

_ To his credit, Vax draws back, looking horrified. "No! That's not what I mean at all! Just keep him busy, keep his attention on you. However you can, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Just give me time." _

_ She sits for a long moment in silence aside from the pleased grunting of Trinket. "All right," she says eventually. Giving her brother a hard look, she tells him, "You'd better make it fast though." _

_ They eat well enough that night and sleep under a roof with a small fire keeping all three of them warm. _

_ There's no reason to tell Vax anything. Her opinion is her own, and he'd probably agree anyway. Or at least understand. Neither of them has much of a private life, being together at all times, but she doesn't question or wonder, and she hopes he does them same for her. _

_ His face is very carefully neutral from the dark corner of the room when winks at the shopkeeper and calls him 'darling'. She can see the simple concern though, for the situation to possibly turn bad, because he knows she'd never- _

_ And sometimes that little tease gives people the wrong idea, which brings Vax to her side in an instant. Vex hasn't killed anyone since that night so long ago, and she doesn't ask Vax about what he does (how many people he's killed). _

_ Vex might kill when necessary, but that's where she draws the line. There's no situation where she needs to lower herself to do anything  _ desperate _. _

_ An unwanted, unloved child left without a family or home. Disgusting, leering, grabbing. Women with poorly disguised bruises. Every town they walk into, these are the things Vex sees (and still feels her own loss keenly, gnawing ache that she doesn't think will ever heal), and these are the things she knows come from sex. _

_ She detests the very idea of the act. _

~~~

Percy gives her a pained smile. "And then less than two years later…." He doesn't need to finish. "I suppose I never got the opportunity to even try."

Lightly, Vex slaps his arm. "You wouldn't have."

"I wouldn't have."

They look at one another for a long moment, Percy's smile transitioning from pained to warm, while Vex returns her hand to his chest.

A squeeze of his hand before she leans up to kiss him softly. "No talking later," she says after they part. "No later, all right?"

Percy nods, and his nose brushes against hers. "Just now." He kisses her lightly. "And tomorrow." Another kiss. "And the next day." This last kiss is no less gentle, but he holds it and feels Vex respond. No surprises this time, no one walks away, it's just the two of them. Breathless after separating again, Percy says, "Do you know how to dance?"

With a smirk, Vex shakes her head. "I had no lord to educate me in the ways of nobility."

Color is high on Percy's cheeks, creeping down toward his neck, and his eyes behind his glasses are bright and focused wholly on Vex's. "I'll have to teach you." His eyes close as Vex kisses the corner of his mouth, catching the very edge of his lip between her own, and his free hand rests on her hip. "Another day."

She pulls her hand free of his, brings it up to join her other, and begins unbuttoning his waistcoat. Getting the lay of his clothing, Vex plants a series of kisses, open-mouthed, along Percy's jaw and down the line of his throat until the final button of the vest was undone. The shirt beneath it is fine, smooth silk, that she can easily feel both his body heat through and his scars.

But Vex tries not to dwell on those, especially not the one just to the left of his breastbone.

"Vex?"

She's fallen still, her head against his shoulder and hands on his chest, just feeling how alive he is in this moment.

"If you don't want to do this, don't. Not for my sake." His arms come up, tentatively, resting lightly on her back just over her ribs. "Please don't do this for me." With just the fingertips of his right hand, he toys with the end of her braid.

She draws back, not out of his grasp, but far enough she can look in his eyes, and lifts a hand to his cheek. "You are the only one I've ever thought about like this. The only I would ever…." With a sigh and her eyes looking directly into his, Vex crushes her lips to Percy's.

Just as quickly, he pulls her against himself, gives in fully to the kiss, following Vex's lead. His outlook isn't quite as bleak as hers regarding sex, but his expectations have been zero ever since that fateful night that this moment would ever arrive. His chest is tight with anticipation, a feeling he hasn't had since he was small.

"Vex. Vex," Percy gasps, and though he needs air, he doesn't allow any space between their bodies.

"I'm sorry, Percy. I-"

"No!" He holds her tighter as he feels her trying to pull away. "I think you should just… sit. And I'll…." It was hard to say, because he was both modest and embarrassed in these circumstances, but propriety wouldn't allow him to lose himself to such passionate feelings. "I'll undress, and you can stop me if-"

"I'm not going to stop you, Percival. If I had doubts-" She pushes the waistcoat from his shoulders, forcing him to lower his arms so it can fall to the floor. " _ If _ I had doubts, I wouldn't be here." She starts on his ascot, fumbling with it before getting it loose and pulling it free. "Maybe I should be the one to undress and you can stop  _ me _ when it gets to be too much for you to handle."

Feeling his heart pounding now and unable to take his eyes off Vex as she unbuttons his shirt, Percy says in a low, breathy voice, "I think you have always been too much for me to handle."

"In a good way?" Her smile is surprising with how bright it is.

He's underestimated her again.

"Only the best."

And she's peeling off his shirt, letting it join his waistcoat on the floor, then, with a hitch in her breath, she kisses that scar, the one that broke her heart. "I know things happen, that we can't control everything, but I don't want to lose you again, Percy."

"I don't want to die again." He sucks in a breath when he feels her hands on his belt. "Vex. You're sure about this?"

Her hands leave his belt, and there's a twinge of disappointment before she shoves him hard. Percy stumbles back, then sits on the bed, catching himself on his elbows so that he's looking up at her, bathed in moonlight. Just as she did with him, she unbuttons her leather vest. Her shirt, when the vest is gone, isn't nearly as fine as his, but then that was never her concern, never her style.

"Have I ever told you-" Percy's voice is rough in a way she hasn't heard. "-that you are so beautiful?"

"No, but I like to hear you say it." It bolsters her, makes it not so scary to slip each wooden button loose and then allow her shirt to fall. But then they stare at one another, and the room is slightly cold, and gooseflesh ripples up her arms.

The sudden flurry of movement from Percy almost makes her laugh as he frantically pulls off his boots, kicks them halfway across the room, then battles to get his trousers off.

When he's left only in his woolen socks and fine drawers, Vex looking at him with an odd combination of curiosity and warmth and  _ not _ moving, Percy appears suddenly unsure if he's done the right thing. That does nothing to dampen his obvious physical excitement, which she is observing with with a clinical distance.

She takes a long moment to absorb the nearly naked arrogant noble in front of her as her lips curl into a smile. "Do you know, Percy, that when you act like a pompous ass, it turns me on?"

In an instant, his cheeks are pink and he's unable to meet her gaze. "I certainly don't mean to," he says quietly, shifting uncomfortably.

"Oh no, darling." She steps closer, nudging his knees apart to stand between them, and her brow furrows. "It's not the money. It's never been the money really. It's…" Vex smiles, her expression brightening. "It's how you use it, to put entitled assholes in their place. You do it from the bottom of your heart."

Percy scoots back on the bed as one of Vex's knees hits the edge where his groin was before he moved. "I suppose I do."

"You know you do." Vex grins, and her gaze rakes down Percy from his eyes to his hips. "Are those silk?" Vex asks, eyeing the pair of white drawers held in place by a simple drawstring.

His cheeks are almost glowing red now, but his eyes are bright. "It helps with chafing."

"And we couldn't have that, could we, darling?"

***** *****

Percy is just straightening his ascot as he enters the thankfully empty dining hall. The only person there is actually Grog, with a plate of food and a giant tankard in front of him.

The goliath looks up, grins brightly with bits of food clinging to his short, bristly beard, and raises the tankard. "Morning, Percy!"

"Good morning, Grog. It seems I've slept in. Is there anything to eat left?"

Grog jerked his thumb over his shoulder, sending chunks flying from the haunch of meat in his hand. "The others said to make sure I saved some for you and Vex." Suddenly, Grog freezes and his eyes narrow as he looks at Percy.

Attempting to be perfectly normal while feeling Grog's eyes on him the entire time, Percy gets a modest plate of food. When he sits and Grog is still staring, it's too much. "Is there something the matter?" It comes out sharper than he means to, but having a member of his own family stare at him in such a manner is unsettling.

"You." Grog points directly at Percy's face, the piece of meat still in hand. "You have the look of a man who's been well-fucked."

Percy nearly drops the cup of water he just picked up. "Excuse me?"

With a grin, Grog tears a bite off the haunch, and nods. WIth his mouth still disturbingly full, he says, "You look like a man who's been well-fu-"

"Yes, yes. I understood what you said." Percy looks down at himself, checking that he hadn't mis-aligned his buttons, then runs his hand through his hair. "How do I-" But when he looks back at Grog, the man is concentrating on clearing his plate at record speed. The meaning is lost, but now Percy is considering going back to his room to change his clothing again.

"Tell me there's something to eat down here, Percy darling. I am famished." Vex strolls in with Trinket at her heels.

He looks at her with wide eyes, then looks at Grog. Back at Vex, and subtly shakes his head.

"No food? Where did you get that then?" She's just at the opposite side of the table now.

Percy shakes his head again, then gestures at Grog.

With a roll of her eyes, Vex says, "Grog, is there food or not? Percy seems to have forgotten how to speak."

Grog looks up from his now-empty plate, chewing loudly on the last mouthful. His eyes narrow at her for a moment, then he barks out a laugh, spraying food. "You've got that look too."

"Look?" Vex glances at Percy who now has his hand over his face.

"I won't tell anyone, I swear. A lady's business is her own."

Vex huffs, and Trinket does the same in a show of solidarity. "What are you talking about?"

With a gesture, indicating Vex from head to toe, he says, "You look like you've been well-" He stops suddenly, looks around, then lowers his voice. "Well-fucked. Didn't want to announce that to everyone around."

There's a thud, and Vex sees Percy with his head on the table now.

Grog grins once more, swallowing the mouthful of food, and says, "Percy's got it too. Did you see anyone leaving his room?"

There's a long pause before Vex purses her lips in an effort to hide a smile and shakes her head. "I'm afraid I didn't. I'm sure she was a very lucky lady though."

Percy whimpers.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblring at echoisles and echoislesfandom


End file.
